Monday, December 14, 2015

Estate Litigation – Father Held Not to Have Abandoned Son and Therefore Entitled to a Share of His Deceased Son’s Estate

Estate Litigation – Father Held Not to Have Abandoned Son and Therefore Entitled to a Share of His Deceased Son’s Estate
A father, who had very little contact with his child for nine years prior to the child's death, was not deemed to have "abandoned" him or "willfully forsaken" him. Thus he was not barred from a share of the child's estate. The case was one of first impression in New Jersey and the New Jersey Appellate Division in In the Matter of the Estate of Michael Fisher II, __ N.J. Super. __, 2015 WL 8484786 (N.J. App. Div. 2015) reversed the lower court’s ruling which had determined that the father had, in fact, abandoned his son and was therefore excluded from sharing the son’s estate.
There were facts that pointed toward abandonment such as, the father moved away, was late with child support payments and failed to attend court-ordered counseling in order to have his visitation rights reinstated. However, the Appellate Court held that these facts alone were insufficient to declare abandonment of the child. At issue were essentially the proceeds from a wrongful death lawsuit against the child’s cardiologist who allowed him to play hockey though he had a congenital heart defect. But the court required that the father “clearly manifested a settled purpose to permanently forego all parental duties and relinquish all parental claims to the child. That purpose was not demonstrated here."
N.J.S.A. 3B:5-4.1 states that one can be held to have given up parental rights when he "abandoned" or was "willfully forsaking the decedent." The standard applied required was that “through his or her unambiguous and intentional conduct, has clearly manifested a settled purpose to permanently forego all parental duties and relinquish all parental claims to the child,”
Since the father paid $37,000 in child support, had one face-to-face meeting and had exchanged some messages on Facebook, those facts precluded a finding of abandonment.